The Unwilling Participant: Tea
by AwkwardIdeasLeadToThis
Summary: See, the tea cup didn't ask to be involved in the war between the boss and his assistant.


The cup of tea never made it to Naru's lips.

Mai had been standing there expecting his usual dismissal and waiting to respond with her usual indignant words - demanding acknowledgement for her service. He was staring at the cup of tea in his hand making no move to consume it.

Slowly raising his eyes from the cup, his gaze had locked onto Mai, whose eyebrows were coming together into a confused frown. Her eyes flickered down to focus instead on the cup of fresh tea she'd made for him and she watched as Naru's arm - hand still holding the cup of tea - moved so that the tea was hovering just outside the perimeter of his desk. A slow smirk began to show itself as Naru looked at Mai with some kind of odd determination – as well as, one could say, a type of… mischief.

The following few seconds felt like years to the young high school girl as she witnessed the – probably - most disrespectful, condescending, _cheeky_ act to have ever been performed in the last decade yet. Had she not seen it done right in front of her, she wouldn't have even considered it a possible reality.

The situation, in the next second, could have been so _right._ And, yet, instead, it had played out so _wrong_.

Her reasonable, exceptionally professional, unwaveringly dead serious boss had slowly tilted the cup. Mai's eyes were fixed on the cup; her confusion, that had slowly climbed higher and higher as she witnessed his suspicious actions, rocketed into the cosmos as he continued to tilt the cup. Her eyes began to widen, eyebrows unscrewing themselves from the frown and instead slowly starting to travel upwards.

A stream of tea met the rug. As the stream thinned out, the cup nearly – Mai choked – emptied, Naru released the cup. Uncomprehending eyes concentrated on the cup as it bounced on the carpet once before rolling around on its side for a moment on the newly wet rug. It crawled to a stop as the object lost the momentum of its – a wince – fall.

Mai's eyes had to be the largest they'd ever been.

Her eyebrows were nearly touching her hairline.

Her brain had short circuited as she tried to process exactly what had just happened.

With the most shocked yet, curiously, emotionally removed, face – Mai slowly, somehow, forced her eyes away from the – the – the scene of the crime. Cinnamon brown eyes were drawn back to the dark blue ones of the young perpetrator in front of her.

And Naru sat in his chair – with that infuriating smirk plastered on his face and a smug look in his eye. He had his arm still held out from where - Mai still struggled to force herself to even consider, let alone admit – he'd _intentionally emptied_ his cup of tea; where he'd purposely _dropped_ the aforementioned cup.

All her thoughts were disjointed. Yet, the thread of logic left in Mai's brain - not damaged by this - this distinctly _different type of paranormal activity_ \- attempted to connect the dots between her normally pokerfaced boss, this - this incident, and the young man in front of her looking to all the world like a cat who caught the canary.

His features slowly slid into the most unbelievable, insolent expression of mock innocence.

Mai stood stock-still. The surrealism of this _fiasco_ allowed her to briefly explore the idea of her being in a daydream gone horribly, _horribly_ wrong.

Naru's face held the joke of an innocent expression for one more second before falling into an almost emotionless expression. The twitching corners of his lips ruined his attempt at complete disengagement from the circumstances.

The next words would've sent even the easy going Father John off the edge of sanity.

Naru made a questioning sound. "What an _unfortunate_ mistake. The rug seems to be in need of some cleaning." He got his twitching mouth under a modicum of control before saying –

"I believe I remember an establishment that rented rug cleaners somewhere – not in Shibuya, though. I will probably have to take a train out to get to the nearest one." He rose from his chair and, maneuvering around his desk and his paralyzed assistant, went through his office door. As he walked, he dictated –

"Lock the door behind me. Reschedule any appointments planned for today and add them to tomorrow's agenda, I'll most likely be _regrettably_ occupied with the task of finding and hiring this cleaning service for the rest of today," as he shrugged on his outer coat, grabbed his keys out of his pockets, and opened the front door to Shibuya Psychic Research. Had there been another being in the vicinity, they might have observed that the tall dark haired man moved in a suspiciously swift manner. He paused just before passing through the doorway and added –

"Before you leave for the day, leave some tea on the stove."

And with those last parting words, the front door of the office slammed shut and the roar of an engine and the screech of tires were heard not even 1 minute later.

Those arrogant, confident, absolutely aggravating words sunk into Mai's mind and started sparking some higher brain functions.

The utter gall of the man was staggering.

This entire episode had officially gotten on Mai's every nerve. Mai blinked, her face began to relax itself from its stiff mask of disbelief - only to slowly twist into the perfect expression of complete, absolute fury.

Her eyes narrowed, eyebrows slammed down into the harshest of frowns, fists clenched so hard, the nails of Mai's hands drew blood from her own palm. A deep, red flush was working its way up her neck, slowly flooding her previously white with rage face with the telltale color of anger.

The incensed heat behind the impressively imaginative curses and swears coming from the occupant in the unassuming 2 story office building for the next 2 hours kept anyone and everyone very, very far away.

A one-shot born from a prompt found within in a _very_ deep and intensely emotional conversation between myself and **dear daydreamer.** Obviously.


End file.
